A clothes dryer works by heating clothes and aerating them through tumbling. In fact, the essence of a clothes dryer is to produce a lot of hot air and continually tumble clothes while exposing them to the hot air. Clearly, this functionality consumes considerable amounts of energy. So much energy that, in many homes, the clothes dryer is the number two consumer of energy—second only to the refrigerator. Because of its relatively high-energy usage, increasing the efficiency of a clothes dryer can dramatically reduce the associated costs of its operation as well as unnecessary waste of natural resources and energy production resources.
Intake air temperature at the heating assembly of a clothes dryer is one factor that determines how efficiently a dryer converts a unit of energy to a given unit of heat. Relatively cold intake air required more energy to heat to a given temperature than does relatively hot air. Similarly, as compared to relatively cold air, relatively hot air is heated to a higher temperature for a given amount of energy than is cold air for the same given amount of energy. The effect of intake air temperature on energy utilization illustrates why ingesting relatively cold air intake air (e.g., indoor air) at the heating assembly of a clothes dryer adversely affects efficiency and performance of the clothes dryer. Therefore, an apparatus that delivers relatively hot air to the heating assembly of a clothes dryer without an associated cost for delivering such heated air is useful and advantageous.